Taking Off in an Airplane

Taking off in an airplane is actually very easy.

If you go fast enough, the wings will do their magic just like they were designed to do, and the airplane will lift off the ground.  Simple laws of physics are in play:  with enough speed, nobody can stop it.

Of course, having left the ground, you must pilot the airplane.  Crashes do not count as good flying, and pain is not to your benefit either. 

With a car, there is usually more road in front of you.  A runway, however, is only so long.  So when you are taking off, you want to get off the runway and into the air as quickly as possible.  To that end, you must give the engine full throttle.  There can be no hesitation.

Do you have a teenager who likes to drag-race away from a stop-light?  Send him to a flight school.  Taking off is far more fun.

An airplane can not only turn right or left.  It can also go higher or (once up there) go lower.

An airplane does not have a steering wheel.   An airplane has a “yoke”.  No joke.

You pull the yoke towards you to go upwards – to climb to a higher altitude.  You push the yoke away to go down – to descend.

So when starting to take off, you keep the yoke pushed away from you as you start rolling.  Once the airplane is moving fast enough that the wings start doing their magic, the airplane is going fast enough to fly.

Then you pull the yoke just enough to properly leave the ground.  “Properly”, in this case, translates to “gently” – preventing the airplane from trying to climb at too steep an angle.

Most of the time, the actions you take in an airplane are made “gently”.

After Taking Off

Since this is your first take-off, you are obviously a student pilot.  Your first flight will “stay in the pattern”.  

The pattern is an oval – kind of like your high school’s quarter-mile track, or the oval of train track laid out for your Lionel train set at Christmas.  As soon as your take-off has reached several hundred feet above the ground, you will make a slow, gentle left turn.  Your turn will continue until the airplane is flying parallel to the runway, but going in the opposite direction.  

Once you are about 800 feet above ground, you will reduce the throttle enough to stop climbing, but keeping enough throttle for level flight.  

As a rule, you use the throttle to control the airplane’s altitude.  Use more throttle to climb, and reduce the throttle to descend.

Landing an Airplane

All too soon, you will have flown a bit past the runway.  

When you look back over your left shoulder, you can still see the runway.  It is time to land.  

Reduce the throttle to slow down and to lose altitude – to descend – and begin making another U-turn. That turn continues until you and the airplane are once again lined up with the runway.  

Since you have been descending, by the time you are lined up with the runway you will be only a couple hundred feet above it.  For landing, reduce the throttle to idle.  

The airplane has three wheels, like a tricycle – the main wheels and the nose wheel.  Land on the main landing gear, pulling back on the yoke just enough to keep the airplane’s nose up and its nose-wheel off the ground for as long as possible.  

At some point, your speed is too low for the wings to do their physics-based magic, and the nose wheel touches down.

You are still rolling, but you have made your first landing of an airplane!

You thought that drag-racing at a stop-light was fun?  In the airplane, you took off at 60-70mph, and flew the pattern at 90mph.  Cars on streets are so-o-o slow...

Your instructor will probably tell you to give the engine full-throttle, and go around the pattern twice more!  

Three times around the pattern will feel like a real work-out the first time, but soon enough landings will be as automatic as driving your car.

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